Reputation, reputation, reputation.
This year’s Domain Name Wire Survey asked respondents why they use the domain name escrow service they do. The question offered a number of options, from pricing to licensing to customer service.
It turns out that people really only care about one thing. The rest is just details:
Yes, 61% said reputation was the most important factor. The next biggest factor had only 6% of the vote. Reputation was also top on last year’s poll.
True, reputation encompasses a lot. You can argue that customer service, privacy et al are pieces of reputation. Still, it stands out.
63% of respondents used an escrow service in 2014, and 26% are considering trying a different escrow service this year.
Drake says
Have some issues with escrow.com many clients are complaining their credit card transactions are not going thru, and are asking to be resubmitted.
Looks like this occurred after they got rid of fax in is authorization for a new verification.
Touchy topic as clients try once, twice, third time then they just rather time out in frustration, any updates escrow?
Michael Gilmour says
Interesting survey but isn’t reputation a synthesis of all of the other items? Without the other items you wouldn’t get a good reputation…..just a thought.
Andrea Paladini says
@Drake:
Never heard about that problem, especially since you say that “many clients” (which IMHO looks unlikely … ), neither we nor any of our clients have had any payment issues at all with Escrow.com, maybe Brandon Abbey can tell us more.
It would be nice to know how many people took part to this DNW survey. Everyone can do polls, but we should know full figures to know if the poll stats are meaningful, statistically speaking.
That said, as Michael Gilmour correctly stated, reputation is a sort of sum/result of the main factors and features of the escrow service operations, of their ability to satisfy clients request professionally, securely and in a timely fashion.
If I should choose one of the factors as the most important, I’d say security, and at that point being licensed, audited by independent authorities is the key factor here.
Furthermore, since escrow services include the provision of monetary transmission, and generally government/state regulated financial services, in many jurisdictions outside US and in many US states a LICENSE is REQUIRED to operate.
In this case, if you don’t have a license, you are unlawfully operating a regulated business, which is subject to penalties and/or the shut down of your business.
Being licensed is not an option, as this article would somewhat let you understand …
A government/state license, including accounts auditing, is essential to protect customers in case of fraud, mismanagement and other criminal activities.
Unfortunately some people don’t understand this, and others downplay this factor bc of some vested interest, until something goes wrong …
Andrew Allemann says
Andrea, the survey had about 200 participants. It wasn’t scientific.
Drake says
Yes, Sandra many clients like 5 in total in the past week, you shouldn’t be so quick to judge, as Sandra pointed out below the cause of such actions, which is fine, and I’m sure they have fixed the issue.
Brandon Abbey says
We are extremely pleased to see that reputation is very important when choosing an escrow service. Our reputation has been built over the past 16 years and we did it by doing things by the book. That includes being properly licensed, properly insured and successfully passing every government audit that we have gone through. These are the things that guarantee you are working with a company that can best protect your assets and funds.
Sandra Gordon says
After the discontinuation of the credit card authorization form Escrow.com had a series of attempts at credit card fraud. As a result, over the past weeks we’ve been hyper-screening credit card payments to isolate the common thread and re-establish the criteria for approving those payments.
Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience or delay. This was an uncomfortable but temporary solution to an issue we consider now resolved, thankfully!
ChuckWagen says
This was an issue for me recently with a foreign buyer. What irks me most is that Escrow made no effort whatsoever to alert me to the problem. The transaction timed out and I lost the sale.
Andrea Paladini says
Thanks for your clarification Sandra, prevention is the best tool against frauds.
Bob says
EscrowReputation.com now for sale – serious offers please?
accent says
@ChuckWagen:
” The transaction timed out and I lost the sale.”
Those are common words.
Escrow.com: Why Oh Why do you automatically kill a sale if there is no movement for a week???
Only a week…..
Some clients need longer than that to get their boss’s approval, others are confused and need time to get used to the process, and many others just drag their feet before they commit.
And Escrow times out and I have to start a balky client on the path all over again. If I can.
Leave the sale open! What does it cost you to leave it open? You are killing sales – which hurts your business, too.
Keith says
@accent.
We understand that transactions can sometimes take time and may not complete immediately once they are started,however we need to have a way of automatically cancelling transactions that are not moving forward. There are several reasons for this, but simply put, we can not have thousands upon thousands of inactive transactions remaining in our system if they are not going to be completed.
That being said, the 5 day timeout re-sets after every update to the status of a transaction. This means a buyer would have 5 days to register/log in and agree, then another 5 days to select a payment option after they have agreed. Once both parties agree, the buyer is given 15 days to get the funds to us.
We also have the ability to extend the timeout clock at a seller’s request. If there is ever a transaction you know will not be agreed to in time, you can contact our customer support and ask them to reset the timeout clock.
Robbie says
I have never had an issue with the timeout clause, it is actually good as it creates a sense or urgency with the buyer. Worse case scenario you setup a new transaction, and three clicks later you are back in business. Leaving countless transactions open is not a good thing. I agree sometimes marketing companies can take weeks getting approvals, but at the same time the escrow process is not started until the go ahead is reached, and a solid week for a wire transfer is usually enough time to process payment.
accent says
@Keith: “we can not have thousands upon thousands of inactive transactions remaining in our system if they are not going to be completed.”
—————-
YEESH!
I was hoping you would answer, but please do not think me stupid. Buy another server, its not so hard. We are not talking terabytes here.
” if they are not going to be completed.” — Exactly. Some of them are going to be completed. We don’t know which ones. But if you kill the transaction then LESS of them will complete, and incidentally, a few of them will go to other Escrow companies to complete.
Try this: Leave transactions open for eight weeks and count the sales VS those who came back after being dumped in one week. I expect a 10% increase in completions over those dumped, perhaps a lot more. To a company your size that is a lot of money.
The more difficult you make it to buy something the less sales you get. Amazing how few businesses understand that.
Andrew Allemann says
Perhaps there should be a way for the buyer or seller to click a button to extend a transaction.
Brandon says
Andrew, thank you for the suggestion. We will look into it. In the meantime you can always email [email protected] or call us to request reopening a transaction.